Newton Poetry

I started running last summer after seeing a set of podcasts that made the whole thing really easy. I even ran my first 5k (not a sponsored one, just me out running one night), the longest distance I had run since track season in high school.

Near the end of the season last year, I hurt my knee because of the way I run. It turns out that I roll my feet on the inside, which wears away the soles of my shoes and is rough on my knee. This season, now that the weather is breaking, I decided to grab some supporting Nikes. While I was at the shoe store, the salesman offered me the Nike+ sports set – which fit my style of shoe – and I decided to give it a try.

It seems like for $30 you’d get more, but the whole set only involves a little red and white sensor and a white plug-in receiver for your iPod Nano. Setup is super easy: simply put the sensor into the little hole in your shoe (you don’t need a Nike shoe, either), and plug the other part into your iPod. That’s it.
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“Wow, it’s so big!”

In low-brow humor circumstances, that would seem like a compliment. But in relation to the Newton, it’s kind of embarrassing.

I whipped out my MessagePad at work one day to scribble in something I didn’t want to forget, and my boss saw it over my shoulder.

“What the heck is that?” she asked.

“It’s my Newton. I use it to keep my memory straight,” I said.

I told her it was the first PDA, invented by Apple, and hails from the early 1990s. “That thing is huge,” she said. I didn’t blush, but I did agree that we’ve come a long way since 1994. She knows I’ve been saving up for an iPhone, so I told her the Newton was my stand-by.

Newton users get a similar reaction fairly often, from what I’ve read. It’s happened to me twice. The other time I brought my Newton to a friend’s house while working on Newton Poetry. Someone saw the MessagePad and couldn’t believe it was so bulky. He switched it on, played with the handwriting recognition, and called it a “giant green brick.” I explained what it was, too, and we had a good laugh about the advance of technology.

And it’s true. When I rest my iPod on top of the MessagePad, it still amazes me the size difference. My iPod has a 30 GB hard drive and the ability to hold thousands of songs. The Newton, on the other hand, needs a 2 MB flash card to store data. Plus it’s monochrome and lacks the lush, movie-playing screen of the iPod.

But still, having the Newton around is a great conversation starter. Everyone has an iPod these days, but Newtons are so rare they inspire outbursts like…well, like the one above.

It takes some strong willpower not to give in to temptation and grab a new 20-inch iMac for $999.

Apple’s refurb site is an endless source of lust for me. I’ve grabbed a few iPods as gifts off the refurbished list, and the deals are great.

What stops me from grabbing my tax rebate check and ordering a new Leopard-powered beauty? For one, I don’t have enough room in my apartment for a dedicated desktop machine. My iBook gets me by just fine, and I have a Bondi iMac G3 that gets me by as a “gaming machine” and Newton hub.

After seeing one of the new iMacs in person (the monstrous 24-inch model), however, I can’t help but yearn for one. My plan is to purchase an iMac after I purchase my own home, which may be a year or two into the future – or when I get my own apartment (I have a roommate, who has his own computer).

In the meantime, I’m hoping some angel stops by Apple’s site and surprises me on my birthday this weekend. Hope springs eternal!

Time for some links:

• Download iPhone apps to iPod Touch for free [via Simplehelp]
• iTunes now #1 music retailer [Ars Technica]
• Celebrity Mac/iPhone/iPod sightings [Macenstein – they have a whole series going, but this one was one of my favs]

Now that I’ve been using my Newton for everyday tasks like meetings, dates, and jotting down notes, a jarring thought occured to me: what will I do when I (eventually) buy an iPhone?

Does it makes sense to keep lugging my Newton around everywhere? Will its nimble features be replaced by the Jesus Phone?

First of all, I haven’t decided on a date to purchase an iPhone just yet. Part of me wants to wait until June, when the SDK stuff officially comes out. And the other part of me wants the 3G iPhone so bad I can taste it. Sometimes, I want to drive to Ann Arbor and grab the darn thing. Why not?

Because my MessagePad 110 is so darned big, carrying an iPhone would be a blessing. It can fit into my pocket, it weighs far less (4.8 ounces verses well over a pound), and it can take the place of my current phone and the Newton.

With the SDK applications, I’ll surely be able to jot notes and organize my GTD life. There’s already a calendar and contacts feature. Plus there’s the fun of controlling the thing with my fingertips; no stylus to lose with an iPhone.

Even if I decide to abandon the Newt, I can still experiment with it and play around with its applications for the purpose of this blog. I would still like to buy a 2×00 model to mess with. And there’s always that spare eMate out there that could help with these here blog posts.

Newton Poetry is first and foremost a blog about Newton MessagePads, their culture, and the crazy “poetry” the come up with. But it’s also about Apple and its portable products, and so an iPhone would fit right in.

We’ll see what actually happens when I do buy the iPhone. Until then, my MessagePad will remain my trusted companion and “memory box.”

Giving all the guff that Apple has received lately about becoming more “green,” it’s no surprise that Apple would want to protect its reputation – especially considering it was founded by two liberals in Northern California.

I opened my shareholder meeting proxy vote ballot several weeks ago and found this little gem as one of the voting items:

TO CONSIDER A SHAREHOLDER PROPOSAL ENTITLED “AMEND CORPORATE BYLAWS ESTABLISHING A BOARD COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABILITY”, IF PROPERLY PRESENTED AT THE MEETING.

Could this be the work of board member Al Gore? Or pressure from groups like Greenpeace? Or maybe it’s just Apple finally getting serious about recycling and sustainability.

Just how green is Apple? Before Greenpeace launched its campaign against Apple, highlighted by its mock apple.com site (that asks “We love our iPods, but can we lose the iWaste?”), Apple was phasing out production of lead-balloon CRT monitors beginning with the iMac G4. And according to Apple, the “greening” began ten years earlier:

Apple started recycling in 1994 and today we operate recycling programs in countries where more than 82% of all Macs and iPods are sold. By the end of this year, that figure will increase to 93%. Apple recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, which is equal to 9.5% of the weight of all products Apple sold seven years earlier. We expect this percentage to grow to 13% in 2007, and to 20% in 2008. By 2010, we forecast recycling 19 million pounds of e-waste per year — nearly 30% of the product weight we sold seven years earlier.

Right. And just recently, Steve Jobs bragged about the MacBook Air’s environmental laurels onstage at Macworld. Its LCD is mercury- and arsenic-free. The circuitry is PVC free, and Apple plans to “completely eliminate the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and arsenic in its products by the end of 2008,” according to its website.

Plus, as you can see from these pictures, the packaging is much smaller and more efficient than other Apple laptops – by almost half. Even the aluminum laptop enclosure can be recycled.

Like they did when the new iPod packaging was released in 2006, Apple was quick to mention that smaller packaging helps the environment by using less resources to haul cross-country.

(You can also use iPod packaging in more inventive ways – see here)

You can even recycle your iPod or a cell phone from any manufacturer. Apple includes the shipping label for you, so it doesn’t cost a dime. Now that’s cool.

What seems to plague Apple, a founding member of the US EPA ENERGY STAR program, is its lack of bragging. The company is known to be tight-lipped, on everything from new product launches to goings-on at its corporate headquarters, and when the company does brag, it’s usually about usability breakthroughs and life-changing inventions. Here’s an example: did you know Apple has a partnership with its hometown, Cupertino, CA, to recycle electronics free of charge? It doesn’t even have to be an Apple product. They’ve been doing it since 2002.

Apple has used the same materials other computer makers use, but as the green tidal wave grew in strength, it quietly went about its business. Granted, pressure from the sustainability community has quickened Apple’s pace in phasing out harmful chemicals and implementing take-back programs, but my feeling is the company would have reached its public “greeniness” eventually. It would’ve had to: Al Gore is a board member, remember?

Now Steve Jobs makes a point to bring up Apple’s greening at every major public event. Never mind that they’ve been winning waste management awards as far back as eight years ago.

But any visitor to sites like Low End Mac, or even our own Newton community, knows that Macs have an incredibly long lifespan. People still use Mac SEs and Quadras for everyday use, seeing nothing wrong with running OS 8 and Netscape to do all their work. Browse eBay sometime and see what “obsolete” iMac G3s go for. Shucks, I’ve been craving an iMac G4 for a while now, and am still waiting for the price to come down low enough so I can snatch one.

Mac users hold onto their computers, or sell them so someone else can use them. Can you say that about a 1997-era Dell? Do you see kids lining up for 30,000 used HP laptops, priced at $48 a piece, like they do for iBooks?

I’ve experienced, first-hand, the type of recycling Apple users utilize: at a recent e-waste drive for my recycling group, a man dropped off an Apple IIc (which some folks still use as a gaming platform). Once I saw a Mac SE/30, and another time someone dropped a PowerBook 5300. In other words, it takes years for Apple users to finally say, “Okay, I’ve had this long enough, and don’t use it day-to-day. Time to recycle.” Is anyone going to recycle a used PowerBook G4? No. Never. It’s going on eBay, and it’s fetching several hundred dollars at auction’s end. Used iBook G4s still go for almost as much as a brand new MacBook.

Take Newton users. Here is a dead-and-gone, by Apple’s standards, product, and yet ten years after the last MessagePad came out the community is as big and as vibrant as ever. The iPhone has come and gone, and Newton users are still trading and swapping and modding their green-lit hearts out.

That’s how Apple fans recycle their computers. They either keep using them, give them away, or sell them. Or tinker. Or upgrade. Or…

That doesn’t mean Apple should slack in the recycling department. E-waste is a scary and growing problem, in this country and especially the third world, and Apple would be smart to keep its name out of that quagmire altogether. Apple has enough problems fending off criticism for its sweat-shop labor practices.

Dell teamed up with Goodwill to recycle old computers in my state (Michigan), and several others, which was a smart way to get its name out there in the fight against e-waste. Maybe Apple would want to do something similar: attach its name to a big program, and reap the PR benefits.

Maybe that’s what this whole board committee on sustainability is about. Apple sees the growing awareness for environmentalism, and – if the board is smart – wants to do the right thing by its mostly-liberal fanbase.

Because that’s the name of the game here. Apple, as a responsible and influential company
, should be doing the right thing. Recycling and environmentally-friendly products help in the quest.

But in quiet ways, Apple (and Apple fans) has been doing some of this right along.

I took my first look at the “Most Popular Pages” feature on WordPress, and – to no surprise – a few poems were the most viewed posts here on Newton Poetry.

There are tons of people, myself included, who look for specific poems, analysis of poems, and collections of certain authors’ poems, and sometimes those searches land them here. Which is cool, but sometimes I wonder if the jabberwocky they’re presented makes any sense to them.

After all, my Newton 110 misspells words all the time. One commenter even asked me what the hell was going on, and when was I going to learn how to write correctly. He never took the time to see what this site was all about – namely, putting poems into the Newton and blogging what the MessagePad spits out. Put in “my heart breaks” and the Newton might read it as “my fart burps.” It’s one of the fun hobbies someone can play with on the Newton.

But part of this site has also turned into a “how-to” lesson for new Newton users like myself. As I discover tools, or try out new abilities, I like to share them. Just in case someone comes along (as someone recently did, on this 68k MLA forum posting) that is totally green to the Newton, I’d like Newton Poetry to be a handshake and a “welcome home.”

Take faxing. I tried it out, and it was super easy. Someone could definitely discover how to do it themselves (if Apple’s good at anything, its an intuitive interface). But should they do a quick Google or blog search on faxing with a Newton, I would hope Newton Poetry would pop up and help them out.

And like any Apple fan, I’m always interested in the wider world of Macintosh, iPods, iPhones, Apple history, and trends on where my favorite company is heading. No Newton is an island, and so from time to time Newton Poetry will touch on things that I find interesting. Like the iPod Shuffle announcement, or the decision over whether or not to wait and buy an iPhone.

The Newton community is still a sizeable group, and there are die-hards out there that keep the faith and keep the platform going. They’re very accepting of newbies (thankfully), mostly because they’re so proud of the product they champion, and they freely part with best practices on how to get the most out of the MessagePad. That means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel, and figure all this stuff out on my own.

DIY culture, however, says that you gain enjoyment out of the process and the end product, and few consumer electronics have inspired as much modding as the Newton. It was never intended to be a Twitter client – because it came out before Twitter was ever even thought of, natch – but I’ll be darned if someone didn’t figure out a way to make it work. That’s what makes the community so fun.

So there we go. Newton Poetry will highlight Newton Poetry, as always, but will also touch on how-to tips, Newton history, other Apple products (especially the portable varieties), and low-end tech culture in general. Call it a mission statement – whatever. I love poetry and literature, I love Apple products old and new, and I love playing around with my Newton.

If that’s not inspiration enough for a blog, I don’t know what is.

Welcome to Newton Poetry.

Okay, we can all relax now. Apple just dropped the price on refurbished iPod Shuffles to $39.

It only took them a few days, thankfully, and now order has been restored to the universe.

In other news, these make great gifts for those one or two people on Earth who don’t have an iPod yet.

With my talk yesterday of the refurbished iPod Shuffle’s price, folks over at Macenstein wondered whether or not the lowly Shuffle even counted as a true “iPod.” Is it, but in name only?

Dr. Macenstein says:

Granted, at $49, the shuffle might be the most affordable “iPod” Apple makes, but it delivers a fraction of the features and costs nearly 3 times less than the closest “real” iPod Apple makes – the iPod nano. The shuffle is not the iPod students put on their Christmas lists, the kind of iPod you see commercials for, the kind of iPod that accessory manufacturers cater to, or the kind muggers kill over.

He then goes on to list the many differences between “screened,” full multimedia iPods and the clip-on version. “Sit 10 random people down ask them to draw an iPod,” the Doctor says, “and I would wager not one would draw a shuffle.”

True enough. But it is a classy, snazzy-looking little flash player, isn’t it? And it sure delivers enough music-playing power to its audience – namely, on-the-goers and runners and such.

Good breakdown, and a heckuv an argument.

Apple dropped the price of its mini-sexy iPod Shuffle yesterday to $49, and announced a 2 GB version that’s coming soon

Which is cool. It’s a competition thing: other manufacturers are releasing similar products for much less (some in the conference swag industry give these things away, like thumb drives). So it only makes sense that Apple would practically give away a USB drive that plays music.

What doesn’t make sense is why Apple’s refurbished models are still at the same price:

What gives? The point of refurbished models is the lower price, especially when someone else has already had their grubby hands on it.

Refurbished models are iPods that someone has already owned but turned back in. Apple then cleans them up, wipes the memory, repackages them, and sells them to you and me.

I bought a refurbed iPod Shuffle for my sister for Christmas, one of the brighter, more vibrant models that came out before this last batch. That little magenta gem was a great gift, and very affordable, and my sister never knew about its former life.

But now if you buy a refurbished Shuffle, you get no deal.

Hopefully, in the days to come, Apple will drop the price and make these little beauties ever more affordable. Let’s hope.

That crazy lady? She’s one of us. As is the lady clutching her iMac in techno-lust.I’ve already signed up for the mailing list – sounds like a fun project.